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National Service Blog

Individuals experiencing long-term homelessness also often suffer from medical fragility caused or aggravated by life on the streets and in shelters. Lacking stable access to housing and preventative health care services, they become “high-utilizers” of costly inpatient and emergency care.

The Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH) advances high-quality solutions and cost-effective programs to improve the lives of the most vulnerable people in our society by supporting locally-based organizations that provide access to public resources that enable the chronically homeless to connect to homes, health care, and the community. As a Social Innovation Fund (SIF) intermediary, CSH is leading a project that integrates health care and housing for individuals with multiple, chronic health conditions who experience homelessness.

These individuals often fall into the gaps between systems of care. A shelter provider and a hospital, for example, seek to meet different needs of an individual. The shelter may overlook or be unable to help the individual with health problems, making it harder for him to find and keep stable housing. The hospital, in turn, may overlook non-medical factors such as housing instability that could make its treatment plans for a patient less effective.

CSH bridges these gaps by integrating supportive housing – affordable housing and comprehensive services – with special emphasis on health services to improve access and outcomes while lowering costs for public systems such as Medicaid.

In the spring of 2009, the seeds of our organization—and the seeds for a healthy future— were planted by two important White House initiatives. That March, shovels dug in to break ground on the White House Kitchen Garden, and a few weeks later, President Obama signed the bipartisan Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act into law. Motivated to reverse the startling trend in childhood obesity and usher in a new era of service, FoodCorps' founding team was inspired by these two events and saw in them an opportunity to engage AmeriCorps in building a more sustainable, healthful and equitable food system.

The future belongs to the few of us still willing to get our hands dirty. Once you have real, it’s hard to go back to fake. All around the nation, small farms, edible schoolyards, farmers markets and gardens are popping up. People are eating food that did not travel miles and miles away but food grown right down the street or at least 20 miles from their homes. Some places bring real food right to your community like Real Food Farm, a project of Civic Works Inc., an organic and sustainable farm in the heart of Baltimore, MD.

Before the start of each Cooking Matters class, AmeriCorps member Veronica Palladino has to make sure she has all of her people and supplies prepped and ready to go. She is responsible for recruiting enough volunteers for each class, training the volunteers, and coordinating with the site to make sure they are ready for the course. She also must have enough groceries and equipment to make the recipes for the day.

Good health is something many of us take for granted, until we get sick. Only then are we reminded of everything it takes to get healthy again. But what if those things were out of reach? Fifty million Americans don’t have access to basic healthcare or know how to get it, a driving force behind why Community HealthCorps, an AmeriCorps program, continues to grow after nearly 20 years of service.

Home to the Osage Nation, with the entire county residing within the boundaries of the Osage Reservation, Osage County, OK, consists of more than 2, 251 square miles of land mass and 53 square miles of water -- an area larger than either Rhode Island or Delaware. Unfortunately, even with all this land mass, we live in an area that is designated as a “super food desert.”

For too many years we have addressed the equation of “fit body and fit minds” as requiring two separate interventions. For the mind, we’ve looked toward mentoring. For the body, we’ve turned to physical activity and health education. But our AmeriCorps investment proves that a national service member can be the catalyst to fit bodies and fit minds. Our formula has been to train our AmeriCorps members on how to use the power of coaching to build relationships with at-risk youth that inspire their healthy futures.

Our nation is more health-conscious and health-aware than ever, but for many there are still obstacles – an untreated disease, obesity, or lack of healthy food -- that prevent them from living their lives to the fullest. That needs to change, and our AmeriCorps members are working to make that happen every day.

Nearly five years after President Obama announced the creation of the Social Innovation Fund (SIF) in a ceremony at the White House, the program has achieved amazing progress. Its portfolio includes more than a half billion dollars of cross-sector investments in effective community solutions. Many already show promising early results. Nonprofits are establishing new connections and building capacity that will benefit the entire social sector and the country. And the SIF is accomplishing this in a way that demonstrates the importance of combining innovation, evaluation, and scale to accelerate the pace of change.

Last year I served as a City Year AmeriCorps member at DC Scholars Stanton Elementary School in Southeast Washington, DC. In my role, I tutored and mentored the students at Stanton, and worked with teachers and administrators to help turn around one of the District’s lowest performing schools. I’m proud to be part of Stanton’s turnaround success story. This year I lead a team of 18 City Year AmeriCorps members, all serving through the School Turnaround AmeriCorps grant.

Lacking significant support from family, then-high school student Amanda Parris didn’t believe college was an option. But her enrollment in a dropout prevention program led to night classes at a local community college and awakened a desire to give back to others.